


The Game

by EagleOfTheNinth



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EagleOfTheNinth/pseuds/EagleOfTheNinth





	The Game

The game. It’s the one thing that they’ve all got in common, these ten ill-assorted misfits, besides the fact that they’re Cosmos’s men(plus one boy and one woman). Whenever a few of them happen upon each other in the middle of yet another eternal wasteland or battleground, whenever two or three are travelling side by side for awhile, there’s the Game to take up time in-between battles, and the game is called, ‘What Can You Imagine?’

They all have these visions. These pictures in their heads, from who knows where. And they all know-without having to be told-that they’re not supposed to talk about them. They’re not supposed to think about them, really. But the lure of the forbidden is strong; and the pictures are often so beautiful.

Right now they’re all gathered together for once, all ten, so of course they are playing. All apart from the Warrior of Light, who never joins in; he just frowns at them, and pretends not to hear. He won’t tell Cosmos about this, but he definitely doesn’t approve.

“I can imagine a castle,” Zidane is saying. “A big one made of pale grey stone, with blue slate turrets, four of them. One at each corner, and in the middle there’s this _huge_ sword-blade! Taller than all the stone part of the castle under it. And the castle’s beside a lake, and the sunset makes the lake-water and the sword-blade shine pink and purple and gold.”

There’s quiet for awhile as everyone tries to imagine that themselves, and Zidane looks pleased that he could offer such a striking picture. Then; “I can imagine a temple that’s all painted colours,” says Tidus. “Really bright, and I’m looking down on it from above. It’s by the sea, and the sea’s glittering. And there’s this sort of dragon monster that guards the temple, flying next to me.”

“I can imagine a castle that travels underground,” says Terra. “It disappears from one continent and appears on another.”

“I can imagine being shrunk with a spell and visiting a village of tiny, little people,” says the Onion Knight. “They’re so small that grass and toadstools are tall as oak trees to them.”

“I can imagine being on a plane,” says Cloud. “A small one. Holding on to the wings as people shoot at it. It crashes in the ocean.”

“I can imagine...” Squall pauses, and is silent for so long everyone wonders if he’s decided not to play after all. “I can imagine a fish-and-chip shop.”

Everyone but the Warrior of Light proceeds to crack up.

“A _fish-and-chip shop_?” hoots Bartz.

“A fish-and-chip shop,” repeats Squall firmly. “It’s on a road that runs alongside the breakwater. There’s a little outside table where I sit, and the breeze smells of salt. And I have a plaice and large chips with a pickled onion and maybe a bread roll. Cup of tea if it’s cold. Fizzy orange if it’s not.”

“...What does the food taste like?” asks Terra, giggling slightly embarrassedly.

“Hot,” replies Squall. “Crunchy. Greasy. Salty. Lots of vinegar and pepper. I like pepper. The bread roll has margarine on it, and I put chips on too to make a chip butty.”

Silence falls again; this time, the silence of yearning. Nobody’s giggling now.

“I wish we could go to your fish-and-chip shop,” comments Zidane wistfully, and several people gasp and look nervously at the Warrior, because wishing to be in imaginary places is even worse than talking about them. “I’d love some fried fish.”

The Warrior turns to him, horns and frown. “Are you hungry?”

“I can’t remember the last time I ate anything-” Zidane begins, truthfully.

“But are you _hungry_?” interrupts the Warrior, the frown deepening.

“...no.” Zidane scuffs his toe against the ground. “But I’d _like_ to be,” he mumbles, defiant, but too quiet for the Warrior of Light to hear. “I’d like to be hungry.”

There is a feeling of discontent in the air, suddenly. The Warrior shifts his glare to Squall, who instigated this with his imagining, but Squall is good at ignoring people and the look of disapproval slides off him like water off a duck’s back. “Imaginings,” says the Warrior, looking from one of his allies to the other with eyes as cold and grey and remote as the clouds in Order’s Sanctuary, “are not real. Our quest is real, our fight. _That_ is what we should be thinking about.”

One by one, they look away. The Onion Knight, Firion and Terra even mutter apologies.

But Tidus-suddenly, without warning, something in him flares into life(like a long-abandoned campfire in a freezing, half-drowned ruin of a temple)and he lifts his chin and answers the Warrior back, “Don’t be such a drag. Don’t _you_ ever imagine anything?”

The glare the Warrior of Light gave Zidane is nothing next to the one he gives Tidus now.

But Tidus does not give in to it. “I bet you do,” he persists. “I bet you imagine things all the time. You’re just too stuck-up and snobby to tell us about them. Or maybe all you can imagine is really boring stupid things, and that’s why you’re embarrassed to tell-”

_“She isn’t boring!”_ snaps the Warrior. A snarl, almost.

Silence falls, the deep silence of Dissidia, astonished, waiting.

“She?” Bartz asks, after an endless moment.

The Warrior of Light looks like he’s considering not answering. But then, “A woman,” he says, slow, reluctant. Maybe scared. “Not-not Cosmos.” A nervous glance at the sky, as if worried that the goddess might be listening. “But beautiful. Ink-black hair, and dark eyes, and skin so pale. She wore gold. A dress woven from cloth-of-gold. She was a princess...”

He pauses, swallows. There is something electric in the air, now.

“I think...I think I imagined somebody like that,” Zidane whispers, hesitantly. “A beautiful princess, with dark hair and dark eyes. But she didn’t wear gold...She wore this ratty old orange jumpsuit, or, or sometimes I imagined her in a white dress with a long train...”

“Blue,” says Squall. He looks shaken. “She wore blue. She had a dog.”

Contributions come thick and fast.

“She had _pink_ hair, and she rode on the back of a big blue dragon-”

“-she could dance on water, and her eyes were different colours-”

“-she made me dress up like a girl, once-she thought it was so funny-”

“-not a princess, a man, a thief, no, _treasure hunter_ -”

“-a bow and arrows-”

“-sleeping, on an old ship-”

“-I remember-”

“-my friend, looking for her brother-”

“-singing beautifully-”

“-hid it in her hair-ribbon-”

“-I told her it was a lion-”

“-I _remember_ -”

“I remember.” It is the Warrior of Light who speaks, and he is shaking like a leaf. His face doesn’t look like the face of a hardened warrior anymore-it looks painfully young, and full of dawning horrible certainty. “These are not imaginings. They are memories. They-there was another place, once-I was in that place-she is real, I spoke with her, I remember-” He looks around, wildly, as if he has never seen his fellow-warriors or the bare landscape of the Lunar Subterrane where they stand, before. “It was not like this. Things were otherwise. _Cosmos_!” The name is a shriek almost, a cry of accusation and betrayal from the goddess’s most loyal servant. “Cosmos, what have you wrought? What cruelty is this? I remember her, I remember her name, she said she would wait for me, her name was-”

_(forget)_

“-her name was-”

_(you are mine)_

“-her name-”

_(FORGET)_

“...name...”

The Warrior of Light’s words dribble to a halt.

“Whose name?” asks Firion. It is an effort to ask. There is something dull and heavy sitting on his mind. He wants to sleep. (But he knows, somewhere under that dull, dank cloud throwing all his thoughts into gloom, that he cannot. That he has not slept in so, so long.)

The face beneath the horned blue helmet is so very young. And yet, so very old. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, shaking his head as if to clear it. “No-one’s.”

_(yes, my hero, forget)_

“...No-one important.”


End file.
